WootBot

There's more stuff for sale on Woot than ever before, so much more that it's silly that you have to click through three screens to buy one thing, and then turn around and click through those same three screens again to buy something else. That's why we're breaking NEW GROUND (and doing what every online store already does)! We're adding a Shopping Cart!

If you're a pro at online shopping, this whole thing will be pretty intuitive, so you might want to skip down to the Quirks section. For those of you that have never used a shopping cart system (all 6 of you), we've got you covered! Check it!

The Basics

Add to Cart
Here's how it works: on the main page of any Woot site, you'll click "I Want One" like you always you have, but once you get to the product page, instead of clicking "Buy Now," you'll see a button for "Add to Cart." The same goes for individual items in a Woot Plus sale.

Mini Cart!
Hover over this and it'll bring up your Mini Cart, showing the stuff that's currently in your cart and giving you the option to check out. If you're all done shopping or you're worried about missing out on something (more on this down the page!), go ahead. If not, simply navigate away and keep browsing. Just be careful the items in your cart don't sell out or go away while you're not paying attention (again, more on this down the page)!

Change Quantity
To take something out of your cart or adjust the quantity on an item, it's easy: click the shopping cart icon in the corner of your screen to go to the main Shopping Cart page. From here you can click "remove" under an item to get rid of it, or select a different amount on the quantity menu off to the side.

Quirks

This is all well and good, but Woot isn't like every other online store. Likewise, our shopping cart isn't like every other store's shopping cart. Here are some things to keep in mind:

1. Stuff in your cart isn't really yours until you check out. The deal can still sell out or expire (and move to the sad "Stuff You Missed" section of your cart). So if you want to keep the ravenous Woot mob from yanking that item out from underneath you, don't wait too long to finish your order. And if the I WANT ONE button is pulsing, run like hell for the checkout!

2. Real talk: we only ever had that $5 All You Can Ship in a Day promotion going because we didn't have a shopping cart. So now that we have a shopping cart, we're getting rid of it. Standard shipping is now $5 per order — just get all your stuff in one order, and it's basically the same thing.

3. How does this affect Woot-Offs? Well, you'll have to stay on your toes. Stuff is going to sell out and sell out quickly, so you'll want to check out as soon as you can. Yes, that means you'll pay for shipping more than once if you end up buying more than one item, but the truth is we sell stuff at such stupid low prices in the Woot-Off that you're still getting a good deal.

4. We kept the cart pretty simple. That means there's some stuff you can't do: you can't ship to multiple addresses in a single order, you can't use multiple coupon codes on a single purchase, and you can't pay for your stuff with multiple credit cards. However, you can tell us you love us as many times as you want (but starting at even once would SURE BE NICE! *cries*)

At any rate, we think this is a big step forward, and, if our calculations are correct, it should save the average Wooter 37 years over the course of his or her lifetime that he or she would otherwise spend clicking through purchase screens for each individual item you buy*!

Hugs and kisses,Woot

*Calculations based on the assumption that the average Woot user purchases 392 items each day.

pseudogourmet98

Mostly a wine Wooter. Liked that I could get multiple deals for $5 shipping during woot-offs but will not be able to with the cart thing so this is disappointing. First the added sales tax, now $5 shipping per order, what's next??

mrericreed

ThunderThighs wrote:Welcome back! Holler if you have questions. We're really excited about this new development!

Oh, woot, no How is this a good thing for us?

I get excited about woot-offs because the savings (or even potential savings) on shipping is often the difference between going for an impulse buy or not. I'll still check the daily woot, but this change probably means the end of my compulsive woot-off checking. Well, my boss will be happy.

jmalone

I get excited about wootoffs because the savings (or even potential savings) on shipping is often the difference between going for an impulse buy or not. I'll still check the daily woot, but this change probably means the end of my compulsive woot-off checking. Well, my boss will be happy.

Agreed, most of my buys here woot-off or not are impulse buys, and this will almost certainly cost me more or result in me buying less. I often jump on something I see early in the morning that I think will likely sell out, then return later in the day when i have time to check out Woot! Plus sales only because I have unlocked free shipping.

While Woot! considers their Woot!-Off prices 'crazy-low' enough to still be a deal, which I feel is debatable, I can't even count the number of times I have seen loyal Wooters use the "Sure Woot! is only $2 cheaper than someone else on the internet, but I already unlocked free shipping" to justify a purchase at more post-mothership takover (less classic Woot! crazy low) high prices.

whatsamattaU

Let me try one scenario. I buy stuff off of any of the woot plus sites or moofi that hasn't hit the deadline at midnight central, and the multiple items are in the cart. Midnight hits, I see one more new item I want to buy. I throw that in the cart, and I then submit the whole cart/order, and the shipping is $5, right???

ThunderThighs

whatsamattaU wrote:Let me try one scenario. I buy stuff off of any of the woot plus sites or moofi that hasn't hit the deadline at midnight central, and the multiple items are in the cart. Midnight hits, I see one more new item I want to buy. I throw that in the cart, and I then submit the whole cart/order, and the shipping is $5, right???

Correct. The only midnight deadline now is the sale ending. Once the sale ends, you can no longer buy it, even if it's in your cart.

Important thing to remember is that the item is not reserved for you. It's only yours when we get our money - when you've completed the transaction.

As far as the woot-off, we know this is a change. The $5 all day shipping was always stated to be a temporary thing. We did that to make up for the fact that we didn't have a cart.

You could shop the Plus events first and have them in your cart while shopping the woot-off. Then buy when you find something you want. Just watch that the items in the Plus event don't go out of stock if you have your heart set on them.

The other advantage now is that you should see fewer boxes when ordering multiple items (if they'll fit in the same box and they're coming from the same warehouse).

whatsamattaU

ThunderThighs wrote:Correct. The only midnight deadline now is the sale ending. Once the sale ends, you can no longer buy it, even if it's in your cart.

Important thing to remember is that the item is not reserved for you. It's only yours when we get our money - when you've completed the transaction.

As far as the woot-off, we know this is a change. The $5 all day shipping was always stated to be a temporary thing. We did that to make up for the fact that we didn't have a cart.

You could shop the Plus events first and have them in your cart while shopping the woot-off. Then buy when you find something you want. Just watch that the items in the Plus event don't go out of stock if you have your heart set on them.

The other advantage now is that you won't get 5 boxes when you order 5 items as long as they're coming from the same warehouse.

Bingo. I just stocked up on the Sistema, and had second thoughts and bought another pair of gloves that day last week, batteries, etc. In the end, even though it was all cheap, I put in 10 orders and 10 boxes. This would have helped last week. It's really quite simple, as simple as,....

Gionot

I'm not a power buyer, so this probably won't affect me much.
I will still miss the $5 all day shipping because I was hoping that one day I would actually manage to take advantage of it. Woot Off or not, I've never managed to find more than one thing I want (to pay for) in a single day. Making me put it all in one shopping cart to get the $5 shipping just makes it all the more difficult.

Oh well, it should make the people who have been campaigning for this change very happy.

mamajamerson

This change will definitely be convenient, most of the time. It will, however, keep me from playing the Woot-Off game. With all of the free shipping offers available at other sites, I can only justify paying $5 by spreading it over more than one item.

So, yeah, thanks for preventing all of those future impulse purchases I would've made.

jmalone

I have some ideas that could take the sting of this away for us frequent wooters. First, free shipping coupons! I used to get $5 coupons pretty frequently from woot!, but I haven't seen any since the redesign. A small act of goodwill would go a long way for those of us who feel as though we are being fastened by an inclined plane attached helically to a conical surface.

Second, maybe some sort of paid membership program for PRIMEary woot users who purchase frequently and would appreciate free or hastened shipping might be a good idea. I certainly purchase more than the, say ~16 orders a year, that would be needed to break even by avoiding a $5 shipping charge on each order. Maybe there is even some sort of online shopping monolith that Woot! could look to for inspiration, affiliation, or dare I say partnership in such a venture...

wondernerd

I don't think I'll be purchasing as much now, and may not even bother with woot off's. I think this "shopping cart" will kill bandoleers of carrots (if its not already dead).

If woot wants to consolidate shipping great, I like less boxes on my porch. So we the customers are helping woot cut cost and we are paying more for it. (consolidate shipping to fewer boxes and pay less to ship, charge shipping once per order which generates more revenue per wooter or lose less depending on who's point of view it is.)

This is brilliant!!! I'm pretty sure we are seeing corporate group think at its finest! College business or marketing students out there may find this a good case study of consumer sentiment.

lichme

ThunderThighs wrote:The other advantage now is that you should see fewer boxes when ordering multiple items (if they'll fit in the same box and they're coming from the same warehouse).

Doesn't this mean that the cost to woot to ship will probably be lower? I would think that $5 all you could ship would be more beneficial to woot with the shopping cart then it was without. The cart and the cheap shipping doesn't HAVE to be mutually exclusive. We wantz our cake, and we wanna eat it too!

bruce57

prttymf8 wrote:You'll just have to buy 3 of each item to offset the shipping costs. EVERYBODY WINS!!

Back away from the pom-poms, slowly...

While the "cart" concept is okay, it just doesn't hold water when discussing "Woot-Offs." When a company offers a myriad of different sales throughout the day, it oughta also offer some sort of savings on shipping...that is, if it expects folks to continue to buy throughout the day.

So, either, a), this hasn't been "thunk through" as well as it should have been, or, b), Woot now considers itself such an irresistible Internet juggernaut that people will come running no matter what the cost.

Woot, you done forgot a basic premise of marketing: don't forget who brought you to the dance.

FYI: I've ordered more than 50 Woots since February...and many of those were "ohh, what the hell - the grandkids would like that, and shipping's free" buys that wouldn't have happened had I not already unlocked free shipping.

As the JCPenney fiasco underscores, a company alienates its core audience at its own peril...

lichme

I do see one problem though: What if I want to keep all of my plus items in my cart that I want, until payday: Then hey look, it's Thursday and this thing I actually want to buy on regular woot is for sale now and will be sold out by tomorrow: How do I purchase the single item without having to add it to my cart and remove the other items? I think if you are going to add the cart system, there should be both a "Buy It Now" and an "Add to Cart" button.

sdownin

Way back when, woot offs were $5 shipping per order, too, so I guess effectively we're going back to the old days.

For the woot marketing folk: from a psychological standpoint the $5 all day shipping deal really felt like a deal in my mind. I felt like I was much more inclined to buy multiple items during the day. Even though I effectively can get the same thing by loading up different items into my cart and checking out just the one time, the fact that you're taking back the $5 shipping psychologically feels like something is being taken away from us and as a result, we're going to wind up paying a lot more in shipping costs if we choose to buy multiple items from woot. It may not necessarily be true, but that's the psychological effect, and it may very well result in lower sale volumes, which may in turn necessitate higher prices.

Another recommendation to keep in mind, given that your parent company, Amazon, offers free shipping to it's Prime members and to folks ordering more that $25 worth of merchandise at one time, you're going to need to make sure that your prices (including shipping) are still more attractive than Amazon. We've had quite a number of Woots where the Woot price was the same as or even higher than the Amazon price. So, especially for woot-offs, most of us will be looking for prices at least $5 less than Amazon. If they aren't, it makes more financial sense to buy at Amazon, instead, just to save on shipping.

natedogg828

After some more thought I would be less against this if you changed the woot plus change times to coincide with the regular daily deal changeovers. I can see finding something at 6 am on a daily and purchasing because I was concerned about sell out potential, then a few hours later the woot plus changes occur and now I am upset because something new came up that I would have bought if I had unlocked free shipping and if it is something I really wanted I would have to pay another $5 the same day

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